Lawn mowing price calculator: price per visit and per acre

Charge the cost of the visit divided by one minus your target margin.

Cost per visit = paid crew hours × (crew size × burdened wage + equipment per hour + overhead per hour)

Price per visit = cost per visit ÷ (1 − target margin)

Paid crew hours are the minutes on site plus the drive from the last stop. On site is unload and load, then the longer of the mow or each person’s share of mowing, trimming and blowing.

Example: a 10,000 sq ft lawn, a 52-inch deck at 6 mph, a crew of two at 28 dollars an hour, 15 crew minutes of trimming and blowing, 4 minutes to unload and 12 minutes of driving. Equipment is 18 dollars and overhead 15 dollars per crew hour. That is 26.2 paid minutes and a cost of 38.91 dollars, so a 30% margin needs 55.59 dollars, quoted at 60.

Get the burdened wage from our labor burden calculator.

Multiply the deck width in feet by the speed in mph, then by 5,280 feet in a mile, divide by 43,560 square feet in an acre, and allow for turns and overlap.

Acres per hour = deck width (ft) × mph × 5,280 ÷ 43,560 × efficiency

That is the same as Ferris’s chart formula, (mph × deck feet ÷ 8.25) × efficiency. Ferris shows 80% and 100% columns; the calculator starts at 80% and lets you change it.

Example: a 52-inch deck is 4.33 feet. 4.33 × 6 mph ÷ 8.25 × 0.80 = 2.52 acres an hour, so one acre takes about 24 minutes of mowing.

Divide the price per visit by the acres mowed.

Price per acre = price per visit ÷ acres

The per-acre price falls as lawns grow, because unload, load and the drive are spread over more grass. Trim time grows with the edge of the lawn, not its area. A commercial property cut with a wider, faster mower drops further.

Example: with the settings above, 1 acre comes to 95 dollars a visit and 5 acres to 290 dollars, or 58 dollars an acre. Cutting the same 5 acres with a 61-inch deck at 8 mph (3.94 acres an hour) gives 200 dollars, or 40 dollars an acre.

Step 4 prints this as a grid from 2,500 sq ft to 10 acres.

Yes. Under federal wage law, travel from job site to job site during the workday is hours worked, so the crew is paid for it and each lawn has to cover its share.

29 CFR 785.38 says this time “must be counted as hours worked.” State wage rules can add to it.

Example: 12 minutes of driving with a crew of two at 28 dollars an hour is 11.20 dollars of labor per stop, before the truck.

Put each lawn’s own drive minutes in the route list in step 5 to see which stops cost the most to reach.

Multiply the price per visit by the visits in the season, then divide by the months you bill.

Monthly price = price per visit × visits per season ÷ months billed

Jobber’s recurring jobs bill either per visit, charged for each visit, or at a fixed price for each invoicing period. The monthly figure here is the fixed price.

Example: 60 dollars × 28 visits = 1,680 dollars for the season. Billed over 7 months, that is 240 dollars a month.